Dr. Fauci joins Barstool Sports’ ‘Pardon My Take’ to warn young people about coronavirus
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Barstool Sports’ wildly popular “Pardon My Take” is typically a satirical sports podcast, but Wednesday’s edition turned serious when Dr. Anthony Fauci joined the program to explain coronavirus to an audience of young people who “need to protect” the vulnerable.
Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been making the media rounds and has emerged as a household name as the growing coronavirus pandemic has overwhelmed society.
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Many have blamed young people and millennials for refusing to follow the rules of social distancing and self-quarantining, instead opting to go about their lives as normal. “Pardon My Take” has a massive audience of youngsters.
Hosts PFT Commenter and Big Cat hyped the episode as the most important in the history of the show, which regularly sits atop podcast charts. They began the interview by asking Dr. Fauci how he’s personally handled the long days and non-stop media appearances — but the doctor chalked it up as part of the job.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“This is an important challenge, this is what I do,” he said. “It’s very stressful, you cannot imagine because this is a problem we take very seriously and it’s an emerging outbreak. You see what happened in China, what’s happening in Italy, we want to make sure… by our efforts that we don’t have that degree of disease and suffering that the others are seeing in other countries. That’s really our goal and we’re focused like a laser to try and prevent that from happening.”
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“We really do need you, this isn’t something that can be successful without you.”
PFT Commenter said millennials are on the “front lines” of battling coronavirus and asked Dr. Fauci what advice he would give to young people who don’t think the virus will impact them.
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“OK, so let’s first start off with the more vulnerable ones. If you look at the data, and it’s pretty solid data now, that has been collected for at least two and a half months… when you look at the totality of the outbreak in a given country, clearly the people who get into trouble, who get seriously ill and who ultimately die… are very heavily weighted toward the elderly and those with underlying serious medical conditions,” Dr. Fauci said. “The younger individuals, people who are the millennials, people who are otherwise young and healthy, generally, with some exceptions, you’re not completely exempt from risk.”
Dr. Fauci said that young people “may get sick” but will typically recover without any major issues, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t listen to guidelines and take social distancing measures.
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“The problem is, we need the young people to help us to protect the vulnerable because, when an individual who is young gets infected, and either has no symptoms at all, or even mild symptoms, that individual will continue the virus spreading in the community,” Dr. Fauci said. “You might inadvertently, even though you feel that you are invulnerable… even if you are doing very well, you have to be a very important part of our national effort to contain the outbreak.”
Dr. Fauci said young people are not “passive” when it comes to slowing down coronavirus.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“You are an important part of the active plan to contain this epidemic,” Dr. Fauci said. “We really do need you, this isn’t something that can be successful without you.”